Dirt particles such as, for example, chip material, dust, casting sand or liquid droplets, may impair the function of industrially produced products such as, for example, injection nozzles for internal combustion engines. The cleanliness of workpieces in industrial production processes is therefore of great importance.
Industrial manufacturing processes commonly utilize systems for treating workpieces in which the workpieces are cleaned and deburred. In such conventional treatment and/or cleaning systems, the workpieces are subjected to fluid, in particular to liquid such as, for example, water, which is preferably provided with cleaning additives, or to liquids which contain hydrocarbons. Gaseous fluids such as, for example, compressed air, are also used for treating and/or cleaning workpieces.
For safety and environmental protection reasons, workpieces are commonly treated in such conventional treatment and/or cleaning systems in fluid-tight process chambers. In order to ensure as uniform a treatment quality as possible and in order to permit treatment of heavy workpieces such as, for example, engine blocks, conventional treatment and/or cleaning systems use handling robots to move the workpieces. It is known to arrange such handling robots outside of a process chamber and to provide a fluid-tight lead-through device for the robot arms into the process chamber, thereby permitting the handling of workpieces in the process chamber by the handling robot.
It is also known to arrange handling robots in the interior of the process chamber. The handling robots used in conventional systems for treating workpieces have at least six driven movement axes. A workpiece picked up by such handling robots can be moved into a treatment position from a workpiece feeder to a workpiece treatment device capable of moving with six or more degrees of freedom. As a result of the multiplicity of driven movement axes, such handling robots have a large construction space and accordingly take up a large amount of space in the process chamber. Furthermore, the control of such handling robots is very complicated due to the numerous driven movement axes.
The figures are not to scale. Instead, to clarify multiple layers and regions, the thicknesses of the layers may be enlarged in the drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numbers will be used throughout the drawing(s) and accompanying written description to refer to the same or like parts. As used in this patent, stating that any part (e.g., a layer, film, area, or plate) is in any way positioned on (e.g., positioned on, located on, disposed on, or formed on, etc.) another part, means that the referenced part is either in contact with the other part, or that the referenced part is above the other part with one or more intermediate part(s) located therebetween. Stating that any part is in contact with another part means that there is no intermediate part between the two parts.